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Why do small changes in keyword phrasing have such big SERP impacts?

I am trying to better understand why some of my pages rank well and some don't rank at all. I've discovered that slight changes to how the key phrase is typed into Google can have dramatic effects on the results. Why is this? And how should I interpret it or use it? I understand that some phrases will be more competitive than others, but that doesn't seem to explain the variances entirely.

For example, http://traveltipsthailand.com/phuket/best-bachelor-hotels-in-phuket/ (which is SEO optimised for the long-tail phrase "bachelor hotels in Phuket" and "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in Phuket") ranks #1 or #2 for the key phrase "bachelor hotels phuket", but if I modify the phrase slightly to "bachelor hotels IN phuket" it drops to #12 (page 2) with less relevant competitors (like "Bachelor hotels in Chiang Mai") getting in ahead of it.

Likewise, if I search on "best bachelor hotels phuket" (the URL phrase of the page) it is #1 or #2 again, but if I modify the search phrase to "best bachelor hotels IN phuket", my SERP drops to #13.

If I use the longer-tail key phrase "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" the results are even more dramatic. I rank #5 for that phrase in the SERPs with or without "IN" in the search phrase. But if I remove "bachelor" from the key phrase and just search on "girl-friendly hotels in phuket" my page drops right off the SERP radar. Somewhere above #200 I think.

Would love to get a better understanding of what influences these changes if anyone really knows. Is it just Goovoodoogle or is there a logical explanation?

9 Responses

DA and PA is worked out by SEOMoz, it is not the same as how SE's would do it. Its just a guideline. There are also other factors. a website about dogs with low DA, may outrank a website about cats with high DA for the term puppies.

It may be that one site is seen as more relevant than the other, or do better in some other factor.

From what I am seeing, John, it seems more likely that a site about cats with high DA can outrank a site about dogs with low DA on the search term "dogs" or "puppies". In this respect, Google seems to suck pretty badly now.

That's actually a useful clue. I was close to thinking that, but had not quite got there. Using the Moz keyword research tool, I can see that:

- "bachelor hotels phuket" has a KDS of 22- "bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 59, so much more difficult to rank for.

- "girl-friendly bachelor hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 29- "girl-friendly hotels in phuket" has a KDS of 58, so again more difficult to rank for.

Unfortunately it seems the search volume scores fetcher is broken at the moment (must be missing a spline) so I can't see whether ranking for these easier keywords is worthwhile or not. It has been from a traffic perspective, anyway.

But that's not the full story, of course. The attached image shows the detailed Moz ranking analysis for "bachelor hotels phuket" and what's really interesting about this is that my page, with a PA of just 13 and a DA of just 27, is out-ranking pages with a PA of 30 and 38 and DA of up to 97. I guess that's Google being democratic in small spaces?

If I spent 50 credits on the "full report" at this point, would I find out much more about the situation? Not sure if it's worth spending the 50 credits here or not.

The second attached image is perhaps even more revealing (or at least intriguing). When "IN" is added to the search phrase, my PA=13, DA=27 page is being out-ranked by four URLs that have a PA=1 and no backlinks, although they do mostly have higher DA. The page ranking above mine, however, has a PA=1 and DA=13, with only 2 backlinks to my 34. How does it rank ahead of me for this phrase???

It would be good to get more input to this question. I appear to be mostly answering it myself, but none the wiser for doing so.

Another example I noticed in my Moz reports today is "Understanding Thai Baht" where a post I created about currency exchange and carrying/spending money in Thailand is #1 on Google for this phrase. Google keyword analysis says there is no demand and no competition for this phrase, yet it is driving some traffic into my site and the SERPs have almost 50 million results for this phrase. If I use the other half of my page title "managing money in thailand" I disappear from the results, yet it too apparently has no demand and no competition.

It seems at the moment like I can rank very well for any phrase nobody is interested in, but I disappear in the SERPs as soon as there's any level of competition - even from sites that are almost totally unrelated to the query.

So I'm still struggling to really understand the keyword rankings reports I get from Moz Pro and what actions I can take from those reports. Here's an example:

I am looking at a keyword ranking history for the key phrase "Thailand scams". I have a post about this which appears at #46 in the Google USA SERPs and I'd obviously like to improve that positioning (I now have nearly 20 key phrases in top 50 positions, but few are really valuable - this one potentially is).

So I read the ranking report and it says keyword difficulty is 37% (achievable) and I am on the rise at the moment. How do I capitalise on that? The post that's listing in the SERPs has only 1 linking domain and a Page Authority of 14. My overall site authority is around 27, so I guess I can improve my PA by careful cross-linking from some other pages that have higher PA? And, of course, I can try to get some quality backlinks for this key phrase to this post.

But as I look at those ahead of me in the SERPs for this phrase, they are not necessarily doing those things. So what gets them ahead of me? The listing at #5 has 1 backlink and a PA of 19. The page at #29 has one backlink and a PA of 15. And the page at #40 has one backlink and a PA of 14, just like mine. What makes those pages list ahead of mine in the SERPs?

At least in this instance all the pages ahead of mine are actually about the same topic! Good for you Mr Google, you got one right. But how do I learn from this report?

Everett SizemoreDirector, R&D and Special Projects at Inflow (Formerly seOverflow)

Jul 16, 2013

The thing the sites beating you in the SERPs for competitive phrases are doing differently than you is that they aren't obsessing over the wrong metrics. Things like KDS, DA and PA are useful in giving us a ballpark overview of the competitive landscape, including who might be worth trying to earn a link from. They do not always have perfect, or even strong, correlations with what you see in Google. For example, the MozScape crawler isn't set up to detect paid links or spam links. Where Google might ignore, or even punish you, for certain links, MozScape still gives a site credit for them. This "qualitative" value on links is one of the reasons Google has won the search game so far. It is very difficult to replicate at the scale of the entire internet.

The reason nobody can answer your question is because it is pretty much unanswerable. There are too many variables. Maybe if we had a look at your site, and your competitors sites, we could come up with an educated guess.

For the keyword that you drop straight back to approximately #200 for you may want to look into an anchor-text level link penalty, possibly due to too many links, or even just a few "untrusted" links with that exact anchor text going into that page.

Thanks for the detailed comment. Appreciate your time in doing this. I don't think I am "obsessing over the wrong metrics" at all, just trying to understand what I am getting from these premium reports. The bottom line for me in reporting is that if you can't understand the report, you either need to know more or there's something wrong with it. And in this case, I can't understand the report. So are you saying the report is flawed?

As a matter of interest, I have been using this data to experiment with Google long-tail SERPs over the past few weeks and I learn something new every month. I have actually eliminated the difference the word "in" made in the key phrase and now rank equally well for the phrase with and without "in". But using the Moz keyword ranking report to analyse why this has happened reveals very little.

For anyone who's still interested, my SEO ranking for "bachelor hotels phuket" and "bachelor hotels IN phuket" has now equalised. Both now rank #1 on Google, but neither send very much traffic my way. Still, an interesting exercise.

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